Seedling, Magoo, Fuck-Off Machete,
Clambake
@Highbury Upstairs at the Garage, Fri 5th Nov 04
Long-running club night ‘Silver Rocket’ puts on good bands and makes people dance. Hooray!
Nottingham’s Clambake are a rattlingly stupid guitar/drums duo. Straight-ahead rock n’ roll in a White Stripes / Winnebago Deal mould can be found in most UK cities, and while this band don’t really stand out from any other, there will always be a place – and a need - for stupid rock, in a "let’s get this party star-ted!" sort of style.
Breaking down the old fourth wall between performer and audience, Fuck Off Machete bring life to a post-rock sound that had hitherto failed to jump out as much as their name does. Singer/guitarist Natasha – formerly of Scots Domino band Ganger – plays in front of the stage and yelps dirtily, the set coming to a climax with some warped noise from the trio. If not quite as memorable, the songs at times are as threatening and sometimes as silly as the band’s name, and their album ‘My First Machete’ must deserve another listen.
Always deserving of more exposure are Magoo, releasing fine records on various labels since, hell ten years ago now, and going far beyond a reputation for “lo-fi scrongling”. They flit with ease between stop-start buzz-pop and little electro-acoustic ditties, can make one riff sound interesting throughout one song, and let rip with the rock when the need arises. See the brief but rampant fuzz of ‘Nastro Adhesivo’!
Indicative of Magoo’s status is a song that smacks of the Knack’s great one-hit-wonder ‘My Sharona’ but seems to be about fanzines. But if they are musos at least this five-piece know how to make fun. Old favourite ‘East Polar Opposite Can Dream’ has an epic psychedelic groove – and odd title – that can only be imagined as a good jam between Mercury Rev and Clinic, a wall-of-sound effect offset by the fragility of Andrew’s odd-pitched vocal. Exotic rock! With a new mini-album out in January...
Tonight, though, Magoo make way for the last-ever gig by Seedling. The well-respected Dutch band, no strangers to the UK circuit and with two albums under their belts, are quitting while ahead. It’s a powerful performance: Bas is bent double over his bass like a trendy Peter Hook, Marg is bawling eyes-wide into the mic, and - when not switching to singing and keyboard - Susanne is a flurry of violin and hair, while Mariken is smiling at the back and steady with the beats. The rare line-up wasn’t all that made this band so appealing: ‘Cool Baby, My Hips Go Woo!’ is representative of their first album, while ‘Let’s Play Boys and Girls’ contained songs by turns more tuneful and wild. Marg has down-pat the mellifluous snarl of a pop-Polly Jean Harvey, the delivery ultra-sharp in ‘Get You Cause I Can’; the violin gives an extra zippiness to quick pop tracks like ‘About to Fall’ (“Whose mind do you think you are screwing…? Not mine!”) and adds drama to the garage clatter of ‘Attack’. Plucked like a guitar in ‘The Upshot’, the instrument has a whole new dimension in this sweet song (which gains bonus points for funny indie-cool: “You make it sound so sexy, as if you’re Mark E Smith from the Fall”). Finishing with the huh-huh-splutter and harmony of ‘William Tells Me’, the crowd – including a bus-load of fans from the Netherlands, and some who’ve never seen them before – won’t let the band go without an encore, their intense take on the Violent Femmes’ ‘Add It Up’. And that was that, another sad exit by a good and tight band, but as Bas’ T-shirt read, ‘Living is for the elderly’ and we can look forward to future projects from these musicians.… Goodnight!
www.thesickroom.co.uk / www.seedling.nl
